One of the most basic instincts of an athlete is to compete.
The simple task of going out onto the field of play and giving everything they have toward a common goal of victory drives athletes to perform. Regardless of fear, doubt or physical ailment.
Physical ailments couldn’t hold back middle hitter Jenna Gideon, not in this, her senior year. They couldn’t do it during her farewell season.
In mid-October, the 2005 Sun Belt Conference tournament most valuable player proved just that.
On Oct. 20, in a match at New Orleans, Gideon injured her shoulder while playing. She left the match and didn’t return to action.
Western lost the match 3-2 without their lone-senior leader on the floor, and Gideon’s was listed with the ‘Did Not Play-Injury’ tag for the next four matches.
She made it back in time to play in her Senior Day match, a sweep of South Alabama, finishing with seven kills.
“It felt really good,” Gideon said after the match. “I mean, obviously I couldn’t hit it as hard as I usually do, but it was great to be out there, especially on Senior Day. I couldn’t ask for more.”
It appeared that she asked for it anyway.
Gideon played through the pain the rest of the season.
Through the final regular season match, a 3-0 loss at Middle Tennessee State.
Through the entire Sun Belt Conference tournament in Denver, where she combined for 27 kills and just six errors in Western’s ascent to the championship match.
Through all the nights of that tournament in her hotel room, in tears from the pain and having the team trainer constantly pack ice on her injured right shoulder.
Just so she could act on those athletic instincts.
Before that tournament championship match, I sat in the press box at Western’s football game versus Morehead State. When I checked with the Western media relations team about Gideon’s status out in the midwest, they all had the same answer from the tournament brass: She’s highly doubtful.
Guess no one told Gideon that.
Instead, the 2005 SBC tourney MVP showed the same grit in the 2007 edition of the tourney. Right up until an awkward strike of the ball in the third game forced her to sit out the rest of the 3-0 loss to Middle Tennessee.
Following the conference tournament, Gideon said she took the mental approach that her career was over. She said she didn’t want to get her hopes up, only to have them dashed. But she did still have to treat her injured shoulder as if she was going to play again.
But again, not in her senior year. Not during her farewell season.
Gideon and the Lady Tops got the conference’s first-ever at-large bid to the NCAA volleyball tournament. With the shoulder rested and taken care of, she was able to follow her instincts and end her career, as coach Travis Hudson said it, “on her own terms.”
So did the Lady Toppers. With the impressive 27-win record, the ninth time in the last ten seasons Western volleyball has eclipsed the 10-win plateau.
There will be more stories like this, of players playing through pain, but this one is Jenna Gideon’s.
This is one for Western.
Reach David Harten at sports@chherald.com.
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